well, my copy of lethal weapon seems to have some laser rot on the near end of side 1, and it's an older copy with the laservision bumpers "eg side 2" found on older issues.

I thought my Discovision "Xanadu" had rot- speckles all over and horribly staticy audio until I tried it on my lesser ProScan deck in the bedroom- and it plays fine. On the DVL-700, it looks and sounds terrible. Same with the Discovision "Abba". My CAV "Coal Miner's Daughter" and CLV "Psycho" play fine, so I assume the DVL-700 is iffy on some Discovision titles.

is this the one you again got for free from that guy

here is a picture of some bad rot.
has audio issues also.
title is yor hunter from the future. second copy i have bought and both have rot

It looks like a nebula cluster. it really does the areas of top side and lower bottom is like this.

My God its full Laser-rot sparkles. Within each rot dot there is million other galaxies.

http://youtu.be/ByoMUqmNdLA It's a bit less light than you may have thought.

whats it called when someone leaves a laserdisc in the sun for 5+ years, and now you cant even see a pattern on the disc? even the silver backing is crackling off.

this is what i get for buying a disc without looking at both sides.

video is only on one side, and guess which side they put in the sun?

I've gotten rid of The Mask now...

First of all, I want to thank each one of you for this wonderful site.

I have owned a Pioneer CLD-925 player for about 10 years now but I have not used it a lot to be frank.

I have around 50-60 titles.

I have not actually ever experienced Laser Rot. They all seem to play just ine. I recently watched the German
LD of Witness with Harrison Ford and it seemed alright.
I have seen one title with a lot of dropouts which I bought used for like 1 Euro but that LD ( it was the German LD
of "The Untouchables" ) but it had a lot of scratches, I mean a lot, so I assume it was due to its condition.
The sound was still fine the last time I played it.

I have around 40 titles from Hong Kong as I used to live there for some time. I noticed most of those titles
seem to be Made in Japan from Pioneer. They are all Hong Kong movies.

I would like to ask:

Are Pioneer Made in Japan manufactured LDs generally safe from Laser Rot ? Because I could get more Laserdiscs
in Hong Kong for really cheap. And I really love those covers. I checked two Laserdiscs recently and they appeared
to be fine and they old had a Pioneer logo on its back which said Made in Japan.

I must say I do not intend on spending a lot of money on purchasing Laser Discs in the future as I am quite fond
of the DVD format and have never had any issues with them but there are certain titles on LD I really wish to acquire so
my question is how safe are the Criterion releases of Akira and Blade Runner ? I really love those two movies very
much and noticed those discs are not very expensive. Are there any cases of Laser Rot associated with these two
releases ? I also wish the aquire the Akira LD due to its nice original cover.
Can anyone recommend a good seller for US LDs that might have this release ?

Thank you so much amigos.

Well, my copy of The Mask (which is made by Pionner Japan) has Laser Rot.

But, for the most part, yes.

I noticed that actually most of my Hong Kong LDs are produced by Kuraray.

Is it true that there are hardly any reports of Laser Rot associated with this manufacturer ?

That would be just swell.

I think I found my first Laser Rot - Sodbrennen, German LD manufactured by PDO in the UK.
I only played it once like ten years ago but I can see lsome brown spots at the edge on
side of the LD ( it looks like mould ) so I would not be surprised to actually see Laser Rot on this disc

From what I have learned any LD manufactured by PDO is a high candidator for Laser Rot.

Hello confederate,

Yes, PDO UK discs are rather prone to laser rot. The problem you described with the dark discoloration around the outer edge seems to be unique to that manufacturing plant. It appears to be something peculiar about the manufacturing processes or the materials they used there, as I have never seen it on any discs pressed at any other facility. I have seen it on several discs from PDO UK, and it is always at the outer edge. They usually show symptoms typical of rotted discs from other plants near the end of the side. Most of the ones I have seen have only minor speckling, and one or two even had only mild distortion in the sound, even though they had noticeable discoloration like you described. I have only seen a couple which were really badly speckled. My suggestion is if you are able to visually inspect a PDO UK disc before buying it, look for this type of discoloration, and avoid the disc if you see this on it. If you don't see this, the disc will probably be fine. I have had almost no problems with PDO UK discs which didn't have visible discoloration around the outer edge. With regard to Kuraray, they have an overall excellent reputation, just like the other Japanese plants. There is almost no laser rot associated with their products. On rare occasions you might find rot on one of their older pressings, but it is usually very minor. I'm glad you are enjoying the site. Julien does an excellent job with it.

David

Cheers, I really appreciate your help and comment.

I am really happy there still is a vibrant Laserdisc community.

This site is truly amazing. I think as soon as I get a proper scanner I will scan some of the covers
of my Hong Kong LDs as I noticed some scans are missing on this site and I happen to own those discs.
I hope this way I can also make a minor conribution to this site.
Most Hong Kong LDs I bought are Kuraray or Pioneer Japan hence I think I will buy more. I travel to Hong Kong
2-3 times a year.

I like Julien too. We share the same family name

Hi confederate,

Yes, it is a great thing that the LDDb community exists. As long as Julien, myself, and other like-minded individuals are alive, LaserDisc will never die! We're truly happy to have you among us here! I would whole-heartedly encourage you to contribute cover photos for any titles which are missing them, as well as submit information to update existing listings, and to add titles which are missing here. It is only by all of us freely adding information that the site can continue to grow and thrive into the future. I believe very much in Julien's original "mission statement" that he wanted to create a database of every title ever released on the format. When I joined the community here in 2005, my collection was almost entirely made up of U.S. releases. As I started to acquire a few Hong Kong titles, I began to notice that almost all of them I got were completely missing from this site! I decided to make it my personal mission to acquire as many of them as possible, and submit information on all of them here, in order to preserve the record of their existence for the benefit of everyone here in the global LaserDisc community. I encourage you to join us in that mission as your time permits. It's great having you on board!

Best Regards,
David

Thank you so much, David.

I have known this site for many years now but have never thought of contributing so far
due to my marriage, professional life etc.
I do not have a scanner yet so unfortunately for the time being I cannot contribute
any HK LD cover scans But I will try my best to get a scanner as I think only an A3
scanner would make proper sense in this case.

Btw I have just finished the German LD of Witness with Harrison Ford. This disc was manufactured
by PDO UK as stated on the back of the cover. The LD played just fine despite being 22 years old
but it had some considerable amount of background noise ( I think that's what you call it ) and
some short black and white strips which were appearing at some times but only for a very brief moment
but that did not really bother me. The sound quality however on this release was excellent ( WOW. The music
sounded better than on the soundtrack CD I own ) and should surely surpass the audio quality of the DVD of this film.
The stereo sound simply had this tremendous amount of dynamic and drive.
A Blu Ray release of this excellent film does not exist. Anyway it was good to see that this PDO disc still
played just fine without any real sign of laser rot. But it has some brown dots on the edge which however did not
interfere with the playback.

I think it would be better to use a camera, rather than a scanner. With an A3 scanner you'll lose too much of the cover on the scanned image. There's a thread around here somewhere with advice about taking cover pics.

Hi confederate,

I'm happy to hear that you had good luck with the German Witness LD. I don't have any discs from the European countries, as they are all PAL standard, and I don't have a PAL player. I haven't seen enough titles that I want which were only released in PAL to justify buying a PAL player. At least that is my opinion on it right now. From what I know about it, I don't think that the format was really supported in the European countries to the extent that it was in the U.S. and the Asian markets. I have heard that many of the PAL releases were not really all that good. Most of what I have seen in the PAL releases was duplication of what I have in NTSC. So there's really not much there of interest to me. It sounds like you got a good copy of Witness from PDO UK however. Overall, I have had pretty good luck with their products. I certainly don't avoid them the way I do those from Sony DADC USA, which are pure poison. I have begun to amass quite a number of PDO UK discs in recent months. I have found that many of the Taiwanese releases were pressed there. The vast majority of the ones I have play perfectly. PDO UK is certainly not my favorite of the manufacturing plants, and it appears that they had their own peculiar problems from time to time, but in general, a decent plant, in my opinion. I believe that the best of the plants were certainly the Japanese ones, in particular Pioneer Japan, which I think was the best of the best. Most of their discs were truly stunning, and laser rot was virtually non-existent on their products. Mitsubishi and Kuraray were not far behind them in quality, however. Of the U.S. plants, my favorites are 3M and Pioneer USA. The majority of the discs from these two plants are very close in quality to those from the Japanese ones. 3M only had one bad period during 1988-89, when some of their discs had spots visible to the naked eye made into the playing surface. These, obviously are easy to detect and should be avoided. Pioneer USA products are normally very reliable, except for the ones prior to about 1985, when virtually all of the plants were having serious rot problems. I generally avoid buying these unless the seller can check them for rot first.

I would again encourage you to contribute any updates you can to fill in missing information, and to add new titles and cover photos which are missing here. It sometimes takes Julien a while to validate them, due to his busy work schedule, but he always gets around to it eventually. I have noticed that he has recently begun to do more work here on the site, validating many old updates and adding lots of cover pictures. This is a good sign, because it indicates that things have settled down somewhat for him after his recent relocation and new job. By the way, I would second what tony426 said about using a digital camera for cover photos rather than a scanner. That's how I do all of mine, and Julien seems to like them just fine. I need to do about 200 more for him, from the most recent additions to my collection. I hope to catch up on this during a vacation I have coming up next week.

Best Regards,
David